Obama was a worse president than Trump, and it wouldn’t even be close if it hadn’t been for Trump’s hamfisted attempted coup at the end of his term. Obama intentionally torpedoed the largest opportunity for a president (and Congress) to improve Americans’ lives since the 1930s and then allowed millions to lose their homes to keep Wall Street happy. Relatedly, he also gleefully oversaw the largest loss of Black wealth in US history.

And he was in office longer — he was fucking things up for two entire terms and Trump only managed one. Obama was also competent while Trump bungled most things he attempted which thus allowed Obama to do more damage.

Trump was a mistake; Obama was a tragedy.

This comment takes me back.

I do not miss the days of having to explain that the computer having “wireless” means it still needs power to work. And that, yes, you still have to plug in a USB cable too if that item works off USB. And also no, we do not have anything in IT to magically automate your job (though I guess these days I could point them at ChatGPT).

I swear, people get around computers and their IQ drops to the level of hamster. Makes no damn sense.

Americans are weird. Most of them believe mild nudity is worse than torture and murder. We are a deeply fucked-up people.

Brick and mortar retail appears to be in a death spiral now, largely of its own making. More and more places have many items effectively unreachable now behind locked cabinets and are severely understaffed — meaning that one would have to spend 10-45 minutes (or more) hunting down already-harried staff to unlock the cabinet so you can get your laundry detergent or Q-Tips.

This is not a smart nor winning strategy and is very much MBA thinking. It means I will be unlikely to buy much from Target or Walmart again if I can get it online. Also, because of this chronic understaffing the lines are extremely long. And I sure won’t stand in them. Many people will make the same decision.

So, Amazon it is I guess. Don’t gotta stand in no lines or wait an eternity to have a cabinet unlocked. And what I want comes right to my door without me doing anything. Sounds vastly superior to the alternative that exists now.

The first ten on today’s playlist:

What is a Normal Yes/No Percentage When Asking a Girl Out?

Average guy, around 200 asks for one yes. Below average, 500:1. Top 10% guy, ~3:1.

Being a guy generally means a lot lot lot lot lot of rejection.

why do people hate vegans so much?

Have you ever met one? About 90% of them are huge assholes. It’s like because they think they are (fake) virtuous in one area, it gives them carte blanche to be mega-jerks everywhere else. And, relatedly, they are almost all sanctimonious pricks.

The best argument against veganism is vegans themselves.

Sick and tired of this silo crap.

It’s not all silo crap. It’s the younger level of techs simply has not had the ability to learn to troubleshoot. Most of them did not grow up with computers (if they are ~35 or below) and just have too little experience to be effective. Sure, you can learn, but it takes time.

Techs in my age range and older often started troubleshooting compy shit from age 5-10 and so by the time we hit the workforce we had years of experience already to build from and on. The techs now have only drooled in front of tablets and often haven’t used a real computer before getting into IT, which they only entered because it pays well.

I know that “anyone can do anything” liberals hate it, but the reality is that someone who has used a computer since an early age and has had to make it work for 10 years is gonna be way more effective than someone who has done three months of A+ training and that’s it. That’s actual life and not the dreamworld some people want to live in.

Modern younger (which these mostly would be) techs cannot troubleshoot a goddamn thing in my experience. I often solve problems in minutes that lower-level techs have been working on for weeks or months (and in one case, years).

The first ten on today’s second playlist:

I did 135 total pushups this evening in three sets.

Damn I love being strong again and looking like a million bucks. It fucking kicks so hard. Anyone who tells you this is too much work, they just want you to wallow in the muck with the rest of the hogs. Don’t fall for it.

Everyone should take their chance to fucking rock the mic like a vandal.

The first ten on today’s playlist:

Russia started this war with an attempt to capture the entire country of Ukraine, not just a strip of territory along the edge.

Exactly. So it’s an absurd lie when complete clowns like Ian Welsh say Russia is winning/has won. That’d like if I enter a 500-meter race, go the first 100 meters, fall down, flail a bit, then stand up and declare victory for myself.

That’s not winning. Obviously. Why do so many people rely on dumbasses to tell them what to believe?

Wow, YouTube must’ve changed their recommendation algo significantly. It actually surfaces stuff I like pretty consistently now and that I haven’t seen or heard before.

Something that actually benefits me from a large tech company? What happened?

I am incredibly terrible at logic puzzles. A company event had some we did as a group. Of the eight of them we did, even after the answers were given I could not understand why those were the answers or how they derived from the clues. And I know I never would be able to even given infinite time.

In my life I think I might’ve understood one logic puzzle. And it was aimed at six-year-olds.

Return-to-Office Mandates Are a Disaster for Working Mothers. Remote work brought record numbers of women into the labor pool. Why give back those gains?

It brought record numbers of disabled people into the workforce, too.

RTO mandates are a disaster for everyone and will lead to lower productivity and a worse economy. But Boomer MBA types absolutely fucking love to see butts in seats. It’s how they get their kicks and it’s a lot harder to torture and harass someone over Zoom. That’s what they care about in reality — it has little to nothing to do with anything else.

Others groveling is their love language. Many of them would tank their entire companies if they could get people to be subservient to them in the office. And some of them will do just that.